The Booking Club

In times of plenty, we stuff ourselves. When the food runs out, we're stuffed too. How have people in the British Isles shared the riches from our fields, dairies, kitchens and seas, as well as those from around the world? And when the cupboard is bare, who steps up to the plate to feed the nation's hungry children, soldiers at war or families in crisis?Stuffed tells the stories of the food and drink at the centre of social upheavals from prehistory to the present: the medieval inns boosted by the plague; the Enclosures that finished off the celebratory roast goose; the Victorian chemist searching for unadulterated mustard; the post-war supermarkets luring customers with strawberries. Drawing on cookbooks, literature and social records, Pen Vogler reveals how these turning points have led to today's extremes of plenty and want: roast beef and food banks; allotment, fresh vegetables and ultra-processed fillers.It is a tale of feast and famine, and of the traditions, the ideas and the laws which have fed - or starved - the nation, but also of the yeasty magic of bread and ale, the thrill of sugary treats, the pies and puddings that punctuate the year, and why the British would give anything - even North America - for a nice cup of tea.Pen met Jack Aldane at Brunswick House in Vauxhall, London.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod

Episode from Jack thanking you for listening to The Booking Club and asking you to write in with your recommendations of books, authors, restaurants for us to feature on the series in 2024.Email: bookingclubpod@gmail.comFOLLOW US:Twitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod

Pax is the third in a trilogy of books narrating the history of the Roman Empire. The series that began with Rubicon, and continued with Dynasty, now arrives at the period which marks the apogee of the pax Romana. It provides a portrait of the ancient world's ultimate superpower at war and at peace; from the gilded capital to the barbarous realms beyond the frontier; from emperors to slaves.The narrative features many of the most celebrated episodes in Roman history: the destruction of Jerusalem and Pompeii; the building of the Colosseum and Hadrian's Wall; the conquests of Trajan and the spread of Christianity.Pax gives a portrait of Rome, the great white shark of the ancient world, the Siberian tiger, at the very pinnacle of her greatness.(Little, Brown Book Group).Tom met Jack Aldane at Noble Rot in Bloomsbury, London.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod

It’s Not About Whiteness, It’s About Wealth, Remi AdekoyaWhat really matters when it comes to race?Western conversations on race and racism revolve around familiar themes; colonialism, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and the ideology of white supremacism form the holy trinity of the race debate. But what if we are neglecting a key piece of the puzzle? Something that explains why a racial order persists today despite a moral consensus it should not.In It’s Not About Whiteness, It’s About Wealth, Remi Adekoya persuasively argues that – in our capitalist world – it is socioeconomic realities which play the leading role in sustaining racial hierarchies in everyday life and in the global big picture, something regularly overlooked in the current debate. Financial power is what enables ultimate influence over events, environments, and people, and, as Adekoya expertly demonstrates, it is money more than anything else that maintains the racial pecking order. Exploring immigration, technology, media, group stereotypes, status perceptions and more, this book cleverly shows how wealth determines what’s what in key domains of modern life, and how this affects racial dynamics across the globe.An incisive, insightful and open investigation into the links between financial power and racial hierarchies, Adekoya sheds much needed light on the status and power imbalances shaping our world and reveals what needs to be done to combat them going forward. (Hachette)Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics, by Kenan MalikIs white privilege real? How racist is the working class? Why has left-wing antisemitism grown? Who benefits most when anti-racists speak in racial terms?The ‘culture wars’ have generated ferocious argument, but little clarity. This book takes the long view, explaining the real origins of ‘race’ in Western thought, and tracing its path from those beginnings in the Enlightenment all the way to our own fractious world. In doing so, leading thinker Kenan Malik upends many assumptions underpinning today’s heated debates around race, culture, whiteness and privilege.Malik interweaves this history of ideas with a parallel narrative: the story of the modern West’s long, failed struggle to escape ideas of race, leaving us with a world riven by identity politics. Through these accounts, he challenges received wisdom, revealing the forgotten history of a racialised working class, and questioning fashionable concepts like cultural appropriation.Not So Black and White is both a lucid history rewriting the story of race, and an elegant polemic making an anti-racist case against the politics of identity. (Hurst Publishers)Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod

Mark Watson is generally accepted to be alive. And yet he's died many times. Not just on stage - though he'll tell you about that - but in other ways, too. There's been the death of a childhood dream. The death of his panel-show career. And then there was the time he died inside and nearly lost it all...Eye-opening, revealing and painfully funny, this is a book about mortification, failure and all the times life doesn't work out as planned. But it also wisely questions whether the things we strive for - recognition, success, the approval of others - are really the things that matter. It's a book about death that reminds us how to live. (Orion Publishing)Mark met Jack Aldane at The German Gymnasium in King Cross, North London.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod

What does it now mean to call yourself European? Who makes up this population of some 750 million, sprawled from Ireland to Ukraine, from Sweden to Turkey? Who has always called it home, and who has newly arrived from elsewhere? Who are the people who drive our long-distance lorries, steward our criss-crossing planes, lovingly craft our legacy wines, fish our depleted waters, and risk life itself in search of safety and a new start?In a series of vivid, ambitious, darkly visceral but always empathetic portraits of other people's lives, journalist Ben Judah invites us to meet them. Drawn from hours of painstaking interviews, these vital stories reveal a frenetic and vibrant continent which has been transformed by diversity, migration, the internet, climate change, Covid, war and the quest for freedom.Laid dramatically bare, it may not always be a Europe we recognize - but this is Europe.Ben met Jack at Abu Zaad, in Shepherd's BushFollow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod

Depp v Heard: the unreal story is the definitive account of the gruelling court battles between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, by the reporter who was there. Using witness testimony and contemporaneous evidence, Nick Wallis has created a gripping reconstruction of the allegations of violence, drug-taking and wild extravagance which dominated two epic trials and made headlines around the world.Nick also weaves in his own reportage and insights, bringing the courtroom drama to life and analysing how courts in the UK and USA arrived at conflicting conclusions.If you want to know who to believe, Depp v Heard: the unreal story is your conclusive guide to what really happened.Nick meets Jack at Babucci in Walton-on-Thames, UKFollow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod

In Feminism Against Progress, Mary Harrington argues that the industrial-era faith in progress is turning against all but a tiny elite of women. Women’s liberation was less the result of human moral progress than an effect of the material consequences of the Industrial Revolution. We’ve now left the industrial era for the age of AI, biotech and all-pervasive computing. As a result, technology is liberating us from natural limits and embodied sex differences. Although this shift benefits a small class of successful professional women, it also makes it easier to commodify women’s bodies, human intimacy and female reproductive abilities.This is a stark warning against a dystopian future whereby poor women become little more than convenient sources of body parts to be harvested and wombs to be rented by the rich. Progress has now stopped benefiting the majority of women, and only a feminism that is sceptical of it can truly defend female interests in the 21st century. (Forum)Mary meets Jack at Andrew Edmunds in SOHO, London UKFollow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod

Has any war in history gone according to plan? Monarchs, dictators and elected leaders alike have a dismal record on military decision-making, from over-ambitious goals to disregarding intelligence, terrain, or enemy capabilities. This not only wastes the lives of civilians, the enemy and one’s own soldiers, but also fails to achieve geopolitical objectives, and usually lays the seeds for more wars down the line.Conflict scholar and former soldier Mike Martin takes the reader through the hard, elegant logic to fighting a conclusive interstate war that solves geopolitical problems, and reduces future conflict. In cool and precise prose, he outlines how to orchestrate military forces, from infantry to information, and from strategy to tactics.How to Fight a War explains the unavoidable, yet seemingly elusive, art of using violence to force your enemies to do what you want. It should be read by everyone seeking to understand today’s wars, as well as those wishing to lead us through the coming decades of conflict. (Hurst)Mike meets Jack at Sankey's Old Fishmarket in Tunbridge WellsFollow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod